


I Am Joe's Crumbling Defenses

by fernsintheforest



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types, Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, Angst, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masturbation, Medication, Nightmares, Non-Sexual Bondage, Pining, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Tension, Spooning, The Narrator just needs a hug, Tyler Durden is a little shit, not beta read we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:14:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28396734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fernsintheforest/pseuds/fernsintheforest
Summary: I want to tell him to fuck off, but I don’t.I know he would if I actually wanted him to.And Tyler knows this because I know this.(AKA: Immediately following the end of the book/movie. Tyler starts dropping by the mental hospital to pay the Narrator visits.)
Relationships: Tyler Durden & Narrator, Tyler Durden/Narrator
Kudos: 23





	I Am Joe's Crumbling Defenses

**Author's Note:**

> i hate how much i love this ship T-T!!!!!!  
> chappie 2 will have the promised resolved sexual tension so stay tuned ;)  
> ***ALSO if mentions of medication/antipsychotics is triggering for you PLEASE DO NOT READ!!!***

Tyler sits in a chair in the corner of my room, sitting back in that fuck-all posture he’s so keen to be seen in, arms crossed across his chest. A cigarette smolders in his lips.   
I’m sitting up in bed for the first time in a while, and staring a bullet into his head with my eyeballs because clearly a gun doesn’t work.   
I want to tell him to fuck off, but I don’t.   
I know he would if I actually wanted him to.  
And Tyler knows this because I know this.  
Rolling my eyes, I tilt my head to see what he’s so intensely ignoring my rage to stare at, and I find him dead set on the five-inch plexiglass square of a window. He stares at this city like he hates it. Like he wants to see it around him in ashes. For once, Tyler’s expression doesn’t really seem to reflect mine, because I don’t care about the five-inch thick square of light streaming through into my room. I care about so much, too much, but not that. I’m almost sure of it.  
“Well,” Tyler finally says, clapping his hands to his knees and standing up, starting to pace around the room like a caged tiger, “Someone cheeked their pill, I see.”  
“Don’t take pills from strangers,” I reply, following him closely with my eyes. The sound of my own voice is pretty pathetic--weak and paper-thin, sounding exactly like how I feel. Since I’d shown up, I’d been paraded down a line of endless medications of every shape, size, color, taste, and texture as the doctors tried to find one they thought was best. At first, I took them eagerly. Now, with the nauseous waves of a thousand different side effects lagging me like an old movie, the sight of a little paper cup was enough to send me into hysterics.  
The side effects were enough to make me crave clarity again, even if I’d never known real clarity once in my entire, fucked-up pathetic life.   
They were enough to make me crave Tyler Durden.  
So, nearly one week pill-free and here he is, like a genie from a bottle, here to greet me as I wake up from a deluded slumber. I was only angry when I first saw him. The feeling seemed to be mutual.  
“They’re making you clever again,” he warns, fiddling with the equipment in the room. “But I guess that’s what you want.”  
“If I knew what I wanted, I wouldn’t need these,” I slur. I shift my weak arms to indicate the thick, leather restraints around my wrists, keeping me within a foot of the bed at all times. I remember being tied back up by a strong-armed nurse in beige scrubs when I went to bed. Tyler studies them for a second, then gives a lopsided grin.  
“Kinky,” is his single-word review.

The argument was minutes away like the smell before a rainstorm, so when it did come, we just let it. Nothing physical. No fighting. No fucking pummeling, for once Tyler, honestly, for God’s sake--and I wouldn’t shout back at him, either, which made him mad. I couldn’t, being as if they heard me shouting then they’d come and force something even stronger down my throat, and being as I barely had the strength to even speak, much less scream.  
This made Tyler mad as a hornet.   
This made Tyler storm out of the room.  
I didn’t see him again until that night.

Nights were always hard here.   
There was the most deafening silence, and strange, uncertain sounds like crashes and muffled voices that broke me out of my placid, frozen state. I never slept. Sleeping still feels like a crime.   
I think about Marla.  
Bob.  
Angel Face.  
Chloe.  
My mother.  
My boss, fuck him.  
My father, fuck him.  
They flash around in my memories like fireflies in a midnight field.  
I think about Tyler.   
And then the door creaks open behind me.  
I always pretend to be asleep when the nurses come in, either to do a check-in or draw labs. If they saw I was awake, then I’d be punished with sleep. In any form they could get me there. Heart beating rapidly, I lay as still as possible as the footsteps echo across the floor, door creaking shut. Maybe if I pray hard enough, I’ll fall asleep right now. If that’s the case, maybe I should have started praying hard a long time ago.  
Creak. Creak. Creak. Creak. Pause.  
A long, eerie stillness creeps over the room as I feel a pair of eyes studying my back. I still pretend to be asleep. Actors can’t fake stuff this good.   
Then suddenly, seconds before I lost my nerve and flipped around, I feel the single bed creak with the weight of another body. A heavy body, firm with muscles. The frame parallels itself with mine, mimicking my position on a larger scale, and presses itself against my back. I feel the outline of a washboard of abs against my protruding spine. One strong, possessive arm snakes around my chest and pulls me closer. I feel tight. Secure. Like those vests you buy for tiny dogs to keep them from panicking in a thunderstorm.  
Warm breath on the back of my neck, I relax what has to be enough tension to pull an airplane across a landing pad. My heart rate slows down. My breathing evens.  
If Tyler feels me crying, he doesn’t say anything.  
I am desperate for him to stay.  
Tyler knows this because I know this.

For three weeks, I take my medication.  
For three weeks, I am a good little lab rat.  
For three weeks, I am alone.  
On day two of the fourth week, I wonder what the worst that could happen is. In my mind, I picture a worst case scenario and a worst, worst case scenario--the first being waking up on the sidewalk, surrounded by the ashes of the hospital and covered in a strangers blood; the second being…  
I run out of imagination before I can think of a second.  
On day three of the fourth week, I decide to masturbate. I realize that the last time I had anything to do with endorphins, I was playing Tyler in Marla Singer’s bed. Does that even count? I don’t think it counts if you don’t remember it.   
The sound of the chains rattling is the only thing to indicate that I’m having any kind of fun at all. My face is as straight as a nun watching Monty Python.  
Come on, think of something sexy.  
Marla. Marla’s tits.  
Marla’s awesome, pale tits.   
Marla’s kind of lopsided, kind of small, bare tits.  
Nothing.  
I sigh and give up. The last thing I need is another negative association. I guess endorphins are the sort of thing people in my position slowly forget about, like grandparents and monks. It had never been my hope to be sexually similar to either of those groups, especially not at thirty, but here I was.  
Tyler.  
No. Stop it.  
Tyler’s rock-hard, glistening abs.  
No way. No. Way.   
Tyler swinging the bedroom door wide open in all of his ass-naked glory, grinning evilly and asking, “You want to finish her off?”  
No, no, no, no, no--  
Tyler Durden, beating the hell out of someone, face a mess of blood, laughing, howling, prophesying.  
And suddenly, I’m not anything like a monk or a grandparent. I’m like a teenage virgin jerking off to a pay-per-view. I’m like a wine-drunk mother watching Fifty Shades of Grey alone on a Saturday night. I’m like two Christians on their wedding night after three years of celebate dating.  
And it’s all his fault.


End file.
